


Bowled Out

by ljs



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-18
Updated: 2010-09-18
Packaged: 2017-10-11 23:40:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/118430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ljs/pseuds/ljs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ten, Donna; Five, Tegan. Cricket bats and memories.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bowled Out

The Doctor's not got an immediate crisis on his hands, so when he happens across the cricket room in his latest perambulation around the TARDIS, he only hesitates a moment before he goes in.

There, his second-favourite bat, closest to the door – when he picks it up, the instrument still fits his grip as if it were made for him. Which, fair enough, it had been, and hadn't Dennis Lillee been cross about it too when the Doctor had got such a beauty...

He takes a stance, imagines a large menacing fast bowler, and makes a perfect cut at nothing. Then he lowers the bat, leans on it, frowns.

Thoughts of one Australian lead him to memories of another: he'd bowled well and hit better that day in the English countryside, and when he'd looked off the pitch at Nyssa and Tegan, the latter had watched with sharp, shining eyes. Tegan understood things like cricket, of course. Part of her home-world.

She'd always wanted to go back home, hadn't she, and he'd never quite got her there. He sometimes gets confused about humans and their attachment to particular bits of geography: Aberdeen's not Croydon, England's not Australia.

This time when he absently hits at an imaginary ball, he misses it.

Looking down, he sees that there's a small cut in the padding 'round the handle, right there at the top. He can see a bit of white poking out, something starting to unravel...

He touches the cut, and thinks of the last time he'd seen her. After that fight with the Daleks, yes. He'd already been a little shocky, what with Davros and with facing what he just couldn't bring himself to do... that time. She'd had that stupid bandage on her forehead – humans are so fragile, so silly, so brave – and wounded eyes he couldn't fix, and she'd thrust out her hand to shake his in farewell. Cold, choky little voice, full of hurt: “It's just not fun any more.”

He swings the bat again. _Fun_. What kind of thing to say was that? What was he supposed to do with _that_? He's figured it out now, he's known what to say to his companions since then, but...

Well. It was too late by that time, he'd already funked it. Hadn't even shaken hands properly to say goodbye.

Her cut hadn't come with the Daleks, he believes now. It was just the only time he'd noticed it.

Tegan danced for him after their time at that English country house. “You missed the best of my Charleston, Doctor!” she'd said cheerfully, and done a fast turn around the console room. Almost pushed him out into the corridor, she'd been so enthusiastic and wild with her arms and legs. But he'd held onto the doorjamb and watched her go. She'd been quite good, he supposes.

Bright woman, too, in spite of everything. She'd once told him – after they'd lost Adric -- that she reckoned he hadn't spent enough time in the Zero Room during that regeneration. “That's why you keep pushing everyone away,” she'd said in that pointed voice of hers. “You carry your own Zero Room with you all the time now. Place to hide.” He'd pished and tushed and said “Now, now, Tegan,” and she'd rolled her eyes, then rolled up her sleeves and started to work at something. She had been a worker indeed.

He sits down on a convenient chair and looks at his bat again, presses his thumb into the cut. The wood could do with a little linseed oil, he thinks. He gets a cloth and the oil and begins to work it in.

Minutes later, or possibly hours, or years, he looks up to see Donna leaning against the doorframe watching him. “Cricket, yeah?" she says. "Should have known. You posh types are all the same, alien boy or no.”

“And what does that mean?” he asks, even though he knows he shouldn't.

She snorts. “Got to have a stick to keep everyone at arm's length, right?”

 _You carry your own Zero Room with you all the time now._

“Not always,” he says to Donna. More, he says it to companions gone. He says it to Tegan, who'd had to make her own way home because he'd funked it, because he hadn't understood. “I can put it down now and again.” And as he suits action to the word, he finds himself adding in another self's tetchy voice, “In any case it's not a stick, Donna, it's a bat. _Do_ try to find the proper word for things.”

“Yeah?” she says, somewhat dangerously.

He thinks once more of that other young woman, her white bandage and white face and cold fingers. He shakes his head at all his selves, wipes the oil off his hands, then with the overarm throw of a fast bowler heaves the cloth into the corner and bounds to his feet.

“Anyway, anyway, Donna, shall we go find ourselves some tea?”

He takes her hand and pulls her out into the corridor and out into time.  



End file.
